Dharun Ravi Says In Newspaper Interview He Wasn’t ‘Uncomfortable’ With ‘Tyler Being Gay’

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NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (CBSNewYork) — Just days since the guilty verdicts in the Rutgers spycam case, suspect Dharun Ravi has broken his silence and says he will fight to prove he is innocent.

Ravi told New Jersey’s Star-Ledger newspaper, “I’m not the same person I was two years ago. I don’t even recognize the person I was two years ago.”

Ravi was found guilty of invasion of privacy and bias intimidation as a hate crime for using a webcam in September 2010 to spy on his Rutgers roommate, Tyler Clementi, having an intimate encounter with another man.

However, Ravi emphatically said in the interview that “I didn’t act out of hate and I wasn’t uncomfortable with Tyler being gay.”

Ravi explained he was just leery of a stranger in his dorm room, saying “I thought it was something sinister, that maybe he got mixed up with the wrong guy.”

Clementi later committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge after discovering he was spied on through Ravi’s webcam.

Clementi’s parents, after the verdict, called it a lesson for everyone.

However, Ravi said he just wasn’t thinking by installing the webcam, and that he “never really thought about what it would mean to Tyler.” He now says “The verdict actually made me feel energized. We will keep going.”